Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Nothing much happened here during the last few days. At least, not much worth telling. Work is pretty hectic - I am currently working with a big financial institution, and, as you should already know (unless you've been living under a rock for the last few months), this economy meltdown is very bad news for financial institutions.

Be it as it may, I love my line of work so, really, I am rarely bored. Still, I think I have been overworked lately. A short vacation could help.

Freezing outside; going out is more of a task than enjoyment, let alone the fact that I live in Waterloo - a not-so-exciting place - and I ran out of places to go and things to do.

So after playing my guitars for a bit, trying - with limited success - to get my Gibson sound like Mark Knopfler's in "Metroland", I went upstairs and I'm now stretched flat on a sofa.

Turning on the TV proves to be a big mistake. A wise man (who has recently gone bananas, in my opinion) once said "I got thirteen channels of sh*t on the TV to choose from" - God, I envy him for having only 13! I have hundreds of channels of crap. Rogers Communications, the prominent Cable TV provider in southern Ontario, gave me a promotion of about 50% off their "VIP" package for a few months, so now I have hundreds of channels with nothing worth watching.

I am rather amazed at what's on TV. There's a show on "Global" now called "Steve Wilko's". Steve Wilko used to be (or still is?) a security guard in Jerry Springer's show; apparently, he was very popular with the audience so now he has his own TV show. Very similar concept to Jerry Springer's, however it's much more focused; that is, it deals with one freak-of-nature at a time rather than with a group.

So now he's talking to some amazingly stupid woman who had four of her children taken away from her because she turned out to be somewhat of a sloppy mother - you know, the type of mother who returns her son's breathing machine to the store in order to get a $50 discount on something else. Customarily to Springer's style, Steve is aggressively abusing his guest, and the crowd goes "woo-hoo" not entirely unlike chimpanzees.

Whenever I think that television has reached a new low, it keeps on reinventing itself. Keeps on setting lower and lower standards - and failing to achieve them.

But entertainment-wise, nothing amazes me more than the fascination people have with reality shows, some of them so ridiculous that I simply can't watch without feeling nauseous. A good example is that show called "The Secret Millionaire", when they take a multi-millionaire, dressing him / her like a "normal" person and sending him / her to live with the common, poor people in America. The catharsis of the show arrives at the end when the multi-millionaire reveals to his new "friends" that he's not the hobo everyone thought he is, but rather he's a multi-millionaire, and he's so excited with how kind and nice the common people are that he just has to write them a cheque for $100,000.

Or, there's the king of all reality shows - "American Idol", which proves that people are willing to do just about anything in order to appear on prime time TV, if only to show how pathetic they are.

Not to mention that show with Paris Hilton, what's it called... "My New BFF".

I guess it's true when they say that, as long as it's on TV, there will be enough brainless people to watch it.